An Unexpected Wife. Cheryl Reavis
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got to love the good woman, too. And if he loves her enough not to cause her worry or pain ever again, that’s when it works out just fine. Or so I believe. And Robbie...well, before the war he was what you might call a regular brawler in the saloons and the...um...other places. Marriage to the right woman—somebody he loved—could have fixed him as well, I’m sure.” She gave a quiet sigh. “Sometimes I think I can still feel Bud in this room. It’s—” she looked around at everything “—nice. If only he’d lived to see this day and his older son come home again—or perhaps he does see it. His boys were everything to him. Everything.”
“Mrs. Justice!”
“I do believe I hear my name,” Mrs. Justice whispered with a slight giggle. “It’s quite all right, though. I’d put my hand in the fire for Bud’s son.” She had such a wistful look on her face, and Kate suddenly realized that this woman had once loved Bud Markham beyond their having shared a childhood, perhaps loved him still, and Kate felt such a pang of loneliness and longing that she had to turn her face away.
“Oh, you should know our Mrs. Russell will be along shortly, too,” Mrs. Justice said, turning to go. “Drink your tea, my dear,” she said kindly. “You are likely to need it.”
“Mrs. Justice!”
“Oh, dear,” she whispered mischievously at Mrs. Kinnard’s latest summons. She picked up her skirts and walked quickly toward the door.
“Mrs. Justice,” Kate said just as she reached it. “Who is Eleanor?”
“Eleanor?” Mrs. Justice said, clearly puzzled.
“Robert Markham roused enough to say the name Eleanor. I think perhaps he thought I was she.”
“Oh, that poor dear boy,” Mrs. Justice said. “That poor boy. If she’s the reason he’s come home...”
“Mrs. Justice! We need you!”
Mrs. Justice held out both hands in a gesture that would indicate she couldn’t linger because she was caught in circumstances far beyond her control. “Drink your tea!” she said again as she hurried away.
Chapter Three
“Miss Woodard! Where are you!” The fact that the question was whispered made it no less jarring.
Am I in a hospital? Robert thought. He tried to move, but he couldn’t somehow. Blankets, he decided, tucked in tight. Perhaps he was in a hospital after all—except that it didn’t smell like a hospital. It smelled like...
...coffee. Baked bread. Wood burning in a fireplace. Lavender sachet.
His head hurt—a lot, he soon realized. He managed to get one hand out from under the covers and reach up to touch his forehead.
Yes. Definitely a reason for the pain.
He finally opened his eyes. A fair-haired woman sat on a low stool in a patch of weak sunlight not far from his bed, her arms resting on her knees and her head down. He couldn’t see her face at all, only the top of her golden hair and the side of her neck. Was she praying? Weeping? He couldn’t decide.
“Miss Woodard!” the voice whispered fiercely right outside the door, making her jump.
She turned her head in his direction and was startled all over again to find him awake and looking at her.
She took a deep breath. “I’m hiding,” she said simply, keeping her voice low so as not to be heard on the other side of the door.
He thought it must be the truth, given the circumstances.
“What...have you...done?” he managed to ask, but he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes open long enough to hear the answer.
* * *
Kate took a hushed breath. He seemed to be sleeping again, and in that brief interlude of wakefulness, she didn’t think he had mistaken her for the still-mysterious Eleanor, despite his grogginess. She knew that the army surgeon had given him strong doses of laudanum—to help his body rest and to make his return to the living less troubled, he said. The surgeon hadn’t known that Robert Markham had already made his “return to the living,” and thus missed the irony of his remark.
She hardly dared move in case Maria’s brother was more awake than he seemed. She watched him closely instead. He was so thin—all muscle and sinew that stopped just short of gauntness. Both his eyes had blackened from the force of the fall in the hallway, and there was a swollen bruise on his forehead. He hadn’t been shaved. She tried to think if she’d ever been in the actual company of a man so in need of a good barbering.
No, she decided. She had not. She had seen unkempt men out and about, of course—on the streets of Philadelphia and here in Salisbury—but generally speaking, all the men she encountered socially were...presentable. The stubble of growth on Robert Markham’s face seemed so intimate somehow, as if he were in a state only his wife or his mother should see.
But still she didn’t leave the room. She looked at his hands instead, both of them resting on top of the latest warmed and double-folded army blanket the orderlies kept spread over him. The room was filled with the smell of slightly scorched wool.
His fingers moved randomly from time to time, trembling slightly whenever he lifted them up. She could see the heavy scarring on his knuckles, and she was sure Sergeant Major Perkins had been right. These were the kinds of scars that could have only come from fighting.
And rage.
I shouldn’t be here, she thought, Mrs. Kinnard or no Mrs. Kinnard.
But it was too late for that realization. He was awake again.
* * *
Robert stared in the woman’s direction and tried to get his vision to clear. When he finally focused, he could tell that she was the same woman he had seen earlier— in the same place—hiding, she’d said. Did he remember that right? Hiding?
She looked up at a small noise. She seemed only a little less startled to find him looking at her this time. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said after a moment. “I’ll go—”
“I wish you...wouldn’t,” Robert said, his voice hoarse and his throat dry. “I...don’t seem to know...what has happened. Perhaps you could...help me with that.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m somewhat bewildered myself.”
“About what?”
“You, of course. You’re supposed to be dead.”
Robert looked away and swallowed heavily. He was so thirsty.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked, but he wasn’t ready to consider that detail quite yet.
“Is there some...water?” he asked.
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
She rose from the footstool and moved to a small table near the bed. Someone had put a tray with a tin pitcher and a cup on it. She filled the cup with water, spilling a little as she did so. She hesitated a moment, before picking up one of several hollow quills used for drinking that had been left on the tray, then looked at it as if she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to manage to give him the water.
Robert watched as she carefully brought the cup of water to him. He could see that it was too full and that her hands trembled, but he didn’t say anything. As she came closer he could smell the scent of roses. How long had it been since he’d been this close to a woman who wore rosewater? He lifted his head to drink, his thirst making him forget the pain in his head. It intensified so, he couldn’t keep still. Water spilled on the blanket, more of it than he could manage to swallow.
Appropriate or not, she put her hand behind his head to support him while he drank, but she took the cup away before he had drained it. “Not too much at first,” she said. “As I understand it, when you’re ill, what you